Atari Poop – Pole Position

Pole Position, or Stripper Pole Position as it was known in Japan. It is one of the rare (I can think of no other) sex games released for the 2600 that was actually made by a real video game company (Namco, to be precise), and, unlike those terrible “Swedish Erotica” games made Mystique,this game is kinda fun and has decent graphics.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s a sex game. The title is kinda suggestive and I’m not a racing fan, so I guess Pole Position could mean something else, but I doubt it. I mean, I assume it has sex in it, but the game is just too hard for me so I’ve never managed to make it to the sex level. I just imagine it’s like X-Man, where you get a perfectly innocent level (a race in this case, a maze in X-Man), followed by some raunchy pixelated sex game, likely involving a stripper pole.

It’s not like I’m making this up. How else do you explain the bizarre print ads they had for this game? Here, have a look at some:

So, this ad tells you to get into the pole position at home. Here, they seem to be implying that the “pole position” involves sitting in front of your TV in the dark with your “joystick” firmly in hand. Yeah, nothing suggestive there. Here’s another ad:

The first thing that caught my eye was the Atari logo at the top, you know, the one with the ejaculating stars? That’s not an Atari logo I’d seen before. Other than that, there isn’t much see to say about the ad visually. I’d almost moved on to another when I noticed some text was underlined on the lefthand side: “This one’s a winner from start to finish”–Playboy Magazine. Why would a children’s video game be advertised in a pornographic magazine? I can only think of one reason: it’s a pornographic game.

Finally, we have this ad:

I think the less I say about this one, the better.

So, there you have it. Pole Position started out as a sex game, but since it was so difficult to reach the sex level and the racing itself was pretty fun, most people never realized. I’m curious though, have any of you ever made it far enough to see the game’s final climax?

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